EDUCATION 43 



educational theory. There are two recent books which would 

 form a good introduction to such a study : the welcome second 

 edition of Dr. Drever's Instinct in Man : A Contribution 

 to the Psychology of Education (Camb. Univ. Press, 1921) ; 

 and Dr. Rivers 's Instinct and the Unconscious (Camb. Univ. 

 Press, 1920). The latter is a work of the highest importance 

 to both psychologists and educationists. Its appearance, 

 taken in conjunction with the work of Dr. Henry Head, marks 

 the beginning of the healing of that breach between psychical 

 and neurological explanations of mental facts which has been 

 hailed with such delight by irrationalist philosophers. Its 

 special importance for education lies in Dr. Rivers 's central 

 thesis that suppression is an instinctive mechanism which 

 takes place at all biological levels whenever one set of tendencies 

 in the creature hinders the efficacy of another ; and that the 

 consequent dissociation is at the other end of the scale from 

 that integration or bringing into co-ordination of different 

 tendencies which is the work of intelligence. A concrete 

 example may make clear the educational bearings of the 

 distinction here drawn. The work of Freud and his followers 

 has been used by some educationists to justify a glorification of 

 licence. The child must be allowed to " satisfy " his impulses 

 because repression is dangerous. This, however, is to confuse 

 conscious control with an instinctive mechanism. Moreover, 

 it neglects the real truth about the impulses of creatures as 

 high in the biological scale as man. To know the facts about 

 repression is a great advance and throws light on problems 

 of man's behaviour in relation to the primary instincts like 

 sex and self-preservation. But it gives no support to the view 

 that the whole of a child's everyday impulses are sacred. It 

 is true that these impulses are not evil in themselves, and so 

 to be ruthlessly exorcised ; for they may well be fused into 

 more expressive processes of wider scope. But neither are 

 they good in themselves, until such fusion has been effected. 

 The truth is that a child who is left free to indulge without 

 guidance a fancy for disorderliness is, strictly speaking, being 

 left to waste his possibilities in the formation of lower-level 

 habits. The point has been well expressed as follows, in a 

 comment on the anarchic device of a teacher who arranged a 

 corner of a classroom for the use of such children as were 

 impelled to make a disturbance : " The child who must go 

 into a corner to throw things about, and smash them and 

 shout, is not really satisfying his impulses. The more noise 

 he makes and damage he does, the less he satisfies them ; 

 and he makes the noise and does the damage because he does 

 not know how to satisfy them. It is very like the incessant 

 use of sanguinary and other epithets ; they do not really 



